She nodded. ‘I–I guess maybe you’d better come right in, Commander.’ She still looked a shade uncertain but, giving her dark head a shake, she held the door open and Shaw walked past her into a miniature hall with a highly-polished floor in the centre of which lay a thick, rather lush and exotic rug. It was a lush set-up altogether, and it seemed as though the Bureau of Personnel paid well.
Patricia hadn’t yet closed the door. As Shaw turned to her she bit her lip and said, ‘British Navy Intelligence. I once came across one of your boys. He was rather a pet…’
‘On the job?’ Shaw suppressed a smile. ‘Job for the U.S Navy?’
‘So you know the hook-up…’ She added reminiscently, ‘Yes, I was. Billy Weston was the name. Nice guy…’
Shaw said, ‘I’ll tell him your assessment of him when I get back to London. I know him well. Short, sandy, grey eyes, mole on left cheek, badly broken nose. Once boxed for the British Navy and—’
‘And never stops talking about it!’ She gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘Check?’
‘Check!’ Shaw laughed. ‘That’s him, all right. Satisfied? If you’re not, you can always ring Pullman.’
‘No, I guess I’m satisfied all right. But Pullman…’ As she closed the outer door the brown eyes widened, became almost violet in the discreetly-shaded light, and the dark brows came down… she really was a picture, Shaw decided. ‘What’s up, then? Don’t tell me it’s another appeal from good old Uncle Sam?’
He grinned. ‘Well, no — not exactly that.’
‘Not exactly? Well,’ she said with a brittle touch of brightness, though Shaw fancied he caught a sudden trace of anxiety in her eyes, ‘you’d better sit down and tell me all about it, hadn’t you. In there,’ she added, pointing through a doorway.
Shaw walked in; it was a big room and expensively furnished but it had a homey, lived-in feel about it and there was a ball of wool and some knitting on a sofa. He said when he saw that, ‘Sorry to butt in and be a nuisance.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ she answered. ‘I was having a kind of domestic evening and I was getting bored as hell. You’re very welcome. Care for a drink?’
‘No, thanks…’
‘Sure?’ she said. ‘I fix a pretty good whisky-sour, though I say it myself.’ She didn’t press him, however, and he liked that. ‘Sit down, anyway.’ Shaw sat in a deep armchair. Patricia O’Malley remained standing for a moment, tapping a cigarette on a fingernail. Then she recollected herself. ‘Sorry,’ she said, and held out the packet. Shaw took one and flicked his lighter. The girl perched on the arm of another chair and asked, ‘Well?’
‘Miss O’Malley,’ Shaw answered quietly. ‘I’m going to give you this pretty straight. Admiral Pullman suggested I call on you because you’re a friend of Rosemary Houston’s.’
Caution showed in the narrowing of her eyes. She said, ‘That’s right. So what?’
‘I’d like to know anything you can tell me about her. Her life here in Washington, what she did with her spare time, who her friends were — especially those who could have eluded the file — you know the sort of thing?’
‘Yes,’ she replied wonderingly. ‘I do, but…’
‘Then I think I’ll just let you do the talking. I’m a good listener, and anything you say could be a help.’
She nodded. ‘I’ll do my best, but what’s all this about?’
‘I’d rather not say for the moment, Miss O’Malley, if you don’t mind.’
‘Oh — okay, then.’ She wrinkled her nose, thinking… wondering, perhaps, where to start. Shaw watched her face. ‘Rosemary… well, she’s my best friend. We’ve worked together, known each other years and years. Went through high school and college together — you know? Guess we’re very much alike or so people say — not in looks, but in the way we see life.’ She considered again. ‘One thing, neither of us ever cared about going around in a crowd. Just each other, mostly, and that in itself threw us together.’
‘No boy-friends?’
She laughed at that. ‘No one very special.’
His eyes twinkled at her. ‘Now, that does surprise me!’
‘If you mean as to me, thanks for the compliment.’
He said, ‘I meant you and Rosemary too.’
‘Oh?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘You’ve met her, then?’
He looked down at his hands, hating himself for what amounted to duplicity on his part in not telling her what had happened to her friend. ‘I’ve seen her,’ he said quietly, ‘and I’m surprised she hadn’t got herself married already, to be quite honest.’
‘Well,’ she said frankly, ‘Washington and New York are full of boys who’d like nothing better than to say they’re her special heartthrob, I reckon. As I said, she never goes out of her way to court popularity, but then a girl like that doesn’t exactly lead a nun’s life, nor does she pass unnoticed. But there aren’t any special boys, not that I know of.’
For some reason, he wasn’t wholly satisfied. He asked, ‘And you’d know?’
‘Oh, sure.’ She laughed again, her whole face lighting up. ‘She’d never hide that from me! No, I’d know, all right. Rosemary’s single-minded that way,’ she added. ‘Puts her career first all the time. No time for distractions, that’s Rosemary — not that she’s anything but normal, of course. One day, she’ll settle down and marry, and make a darn nice wife for some lucky guy.’
‘Apart from her work,’ Shaw said, ‘how did she pass her time when she was here? What were her interests?’
‘Much the same as mine. That’s how we get along so well. We play a lot of tennis… horseback-riding… we both like swimming and sitting around in the sun. And clothes, and shopping, and hair-do’s. We read quite a lot…’
‘I see,’ Shaw murmured. ‘Look, Miss O’ Malley — you mentioned New York just now. What are the connexions there?’
‘Connexions?’ A shadow seemed suddenly to cross the girl’s face. ‘Connexions… I don’t know about any connexions. That’s a funny word to use. She used to go up there for a week-end now and again, that’s all I know really.’
‘You didn’t go with her, then?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Uh-huh. Has she relations there, or friends?’
‘No relations, and I never actually heard her speak of any friends.’ She hesitated, pushing hair back from her forehead. ‘When I say she went up now and again… don’t take me too literally. It wasn’t that often. She went up… oh, three or four times maybe, fairly close together, that’s all.’
‘When? Recently — or way back?’
‘Depends what you call recently,’ she said after another brief hesitation. ‘It was during the two or three months before she left Washington on whatever job she’s on now, and I’m only assuming she is on one. Is she?’
‘I’ll come to that in a moment,’ Shaw said quietly. ‘Have you any idea where she went, or what she saw, on those jaunts to New York?’
She shook her head firmly — too firmly? ‘No. No idea. She never said anything about it.’
‘Didn’t that strike you as odd?’
‘Not really.’ She smiled, a little too brightly. ‘Do you talk to your friends, even your best friends, about your work?’
He grinned back at her. ‘Point taken! But you’d worked with her, after all. By the way,’ he added, ‘why do you assume she went up in connexion with a job, and not — not—’
‘Not a dirty week-end?’ she put in. ‘Why, because I know Rosemary inside out! That just isn’t her style. Course, if she really fell for a man, well, she wouldn’t take up silly attitudes about some dumb kind of morality. I reckon she might go to bed with him all right and good luck to her. But you see there wasn’t any man she felt that way about up to when I last saw her — and she doesn’t just hop into bed with anything that happens to be around… she doesn’t go in for dirty week-ends in sleazy hotels on the wrong side of the tracks, which is what you seem to be suggesting!’ She was speaking passionately, her small breasts heaving. Shaw looked at her narrowly and wondered just why this should be, but he persisted in his line of questioning.